Reduced facial emotion recognition in overweight and obese children

Decreased Emotional Perception in Obesity

“…While there are self‐report data especially on the concept of emotional eating and though there have been some studies on emotion regulation in obesity, empirical data with controlled designs are few for the more basal abilities such as recognizing and responding to social‐affective stimuli in the ‘socio‐emotional processing stream’ (Ochsner, ). Some studies show impairments in facial emotion recognition (Koch & Pollatos, ) and emotion discrimination in obese children (Baldaro et al, ), but evidence on social cognition in adult obese individuals is greatly lacking. Obese men have been particularly neglected.…”

Effect of the catechol‐O‐methyltransferase Val 158Met polymorphism on theory of mind in obesity

“…Previous studies, most of them conducted on children with obesity or on overweight children, have evaluated the identification of facial expressions of basic emotions, which is less cognitively demanding than inferring subtler mental states from only the eyes' surrounding facial area. These studies indicate that obesity is related to difficulties in recognizing facial expressions of basic emotions (Baldaro et al, , ; Cserjési et al, ; Koch & Pollatos, ), although negative results have also been obtained (Surcinelli et al, ). Interestingly, some of these studies have pointed out that difficulties shown by subjects with obesity are especially remarkable in the processing of emotions of negative valence (Cserjési et al, ; Koch & Pollatos, ).…”

“…These studies indicate that obesity is related to difficulties in recognizing facial expressions of basic emotions (Baldaro et al, , ; Cserjési et al, ; Koch & Pollatos, ), although negative results have also been obtained (Surcinelli et al, ). Interestingly, some of these studies have pointed out that difficulties shown by subjects with obesity are especially remarkable in the processing of emotions of negative valence (Cserjési et al, ; Koch & Pollatos, ). The results obtained from our study reinforce this observation, because our sample of subjects with obesity only obtained lower results in the identification of negative mental states.…”

“…We conducted the present study with the aim of ascertaining whether there are differences in theory of mind capacity between adult individuals with obesity and normal‐weight individuals and whether theory of mind performance is affected by the Val 158 Met functional polymorphism of the COMT. Recent research indicates that obesity is associated to difficulties in recognizing facial expressions of emotions and that these difficulties seem to be especially noticeable for negative emotions (Cserjési, Vermeulen, Lénárd, & Luminet, ; Koch & Pollatos, ). Thus, we hypothesize that this tendency will also apply to recognizing others' mental states, so that patients with obesity will show more pronounced difficulties in identifying negative mental states as compared with positive and neutral mental states.…”

Social cognition and emotion regulation may be impaired in adolescents with obesity independent of the presence of binge eating disorder: a two-center study

“…In the literature, studies have been conducted on obesity and impulsivity, emotional factors, social cohesion and social relations, self-esteem, and accompanying psychopathologies; however, few studies have evaluated social cognitive abilities using appropriate tests for adolescents with exogenous obesity [17].…”